PRRS and Bird Flu

Right on the heels of the last post about Avian Influenza came notice from our PRRS group that the local area has passed the "epidemic" threshold for PRRS.  PRRS (porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome) is deadly to our farming.  We are just fully recovered from our last and second ever episode with the disease.  Last time, the sows failed to breed, the first time they all farrowed dead piglets.  We are hearing now about five or six different strains of the PRRS, several of which have become common enough to have a standard vaccine.  Failing that, a stricken farmer must culture his particular strain and stand the cost of having a vaccine made.

I started with pigs in the seventies, after hog cholera was eradicated.  The disease we have had since seems to consist of fast mutating viruses that by their nature will not be controlled to that extent.  But the practices urged on us by the industry are from that former era, when the diseases could be shut down.

The similarities between the uproar over Avian Influenza and that over PRRS are striking in that way. Both are based on a common assumption about health, that it is the absence of disease.

But the reaction to the bird flu is a strong demonstration of the presence of heavy state power, with the mobile appearance of the Office of Animal Health, and the police like practices of control zones and quarantines imposed complete with yellow tape on out door flocks in any outbreak area.  The PRRS effort by contrast is subdued, completely voluntary, and pretty studious, with seminars and teaching events a regular feature.   The difference is strong evidence of the power of the turkey growers in our state's government.

Another assumption about health, a more upstart thought, is that health is strength.  This attitude assumes that certain losses will occur, but they will lessen over time as immunities are built, and that the building of immunity depends on excellence of environment, of feedstuffs and of management practices, certainly including the careful on farm selection of the right (resistant) breeding stock to go forward.  It looks at epidemics as unusual events, events that need to be coped with by paying attention to the entire animal and its entire environment.   

For this we get little help from either official or academic agriculture.  We know, for instance that magnesium is necessary for development of strong immunity.  We know that manganese is critical for reproductive health.  We know also that Dr. Donald Huber, soil scientist retired, formerly of Purdue University and the Department of Defense has noticed that something in the combination of transgenic corn and soybeans (gmo) and the glysophate (Roundup) used to control weeds in their production interferes with the uptake of magnesium and manganese by plants, in addition to zinc, copper and certain other trace minerals from the soil.  Dr. Huber cannot get his thoughts published in the American Scientific Journals, only in Europe.

At a meeting with University Animal Science and Public Relations people recently on campus, I questioned the University about this, asking why it was not running ongoing feeding and breeding trials comparing gmo grains with conventional in the feeds.  I got a complete and hostile silence in return.  I then told them calling the gmo and conventional feeds "substantially similar" didn't sound much like sound science to me.    

Jim